AD&D - New World

these are the days of high adventure!

9: Moonwar!

Centuries ago, after the birth of the Chaos Storm, the elves abandoned the Urth. They grew living ships called spelljammers and took to the skies, establishing a kingdom on the Moon. They left the other races of Urth to fend for themselves in a world of chaos, wild magic, and danger.

On the Moon, the elves forged a world of magic, elegance, and scheming noble houses. They discovered a new source of magic: the Moon itself. They could draw raw arcane power from the environment, and though this made the hollow moon realms brittle and sick, the elves saw no reason to stop.

And then the war came.

The illithids — mind-flayers — terrible telepathic humanoids with tentacled mouths — arrived in their grotesque spelljammers, seeking to drain the Urth dry of its magic. The elves realized there was an entire system of crystal spheres, and a never-ending war between a myriad of spacefaring races: the illithid, the neogi, the giff, the gnomes, and more. The elves turned their might toward the stars and went to war against the evil illithid.

For centuries, the elves and the illithid fought a secret war in the stars. Elven scavenging parties scoured the Urth for magic and weapons. The gnomes — slaves of the illithid — were freed, only to succumb to a life of servitude on the Moon. The war raged on.

But now, something has changed. The illithid fleet arrived in force some months ago, and the elves drew on the full force of their magical might to repel them. But they finally drew too much power: the Moon itself shattered, rotten from within by the elves’ defiling magic.

But then something happened on the Urth below. The Chaos Storm was harnessed by a magical artifact, and the Moon was knit back together — though not like it was before. Broken into disjointed, ever-shifting lunar islands, held together by a common center of gravity, the Moon is a broken shining orb. Countless elves have died. Many have fled to the ruined Urth below, desperate for safety. But others know that the fight isn’t over just because the Moon is broken. The mind-flayers lead an alliance of illithid-drow-gith. The elves fight on, led by the War Matron Tryan Kuraphai, the last shield between the Urth and the horrors of space.

The war continues. Alliances shift. Something has made the mind-flayers desperate for victory at any cost. The Gith have lost their vampire-king — some fight on, but others defect. The illithid fight as if they have nothing to lose. But now with a broken and shattered Moon, perhaps the elves fight with nothing to gain. The Moon fights for it’s very survival.